Kankakee River

An unidentified man whose body was found by fishermen in the Kankakee River in Will County drowned, according to an autopsy Tuesday. Authorities withheld the man's name until they could confirm his identity through fingerprints and notify relatives. The man was pronounced dead at 1:22 p.m. Monday at the Lower Chippewa campgrounds, about 3 miles southeast of Wilmington, according to the Will County coroner's office. Authorities are conducting a death investigation.

For nearly 30 years, Nancy Rish has claimed she took no part in the kidnapping and murder of Stephen Small, a 1987 killing that horrified Kankakee and landed her a life sentence. Rish's boyfriend, a small-time drug dealer named Danny Edwards, lured Small from his home and buried him alive inside a plywood box as part of a bizarre plot that targeted the scion of one of Kankakee's wealthiest and most well-connected families. The narrow pipe Edwards used for air vents proved woefully...

The body of a 3-year-old boy missing for 18 days has been recovered from the Kankakee River, about 10 miles from where the child fell into the waterway. Will County Sheriff's police said a New Lenox man spotted the body of Eric Cunnings at about 10 a.m. Sunday as he was fishing in the river near Wilmington. The recovery of the body ended an intensive search by scores of volunteers and authorities in Will County that started after the boy fell into the river March 30 near his home in Custer...

Monstrous chunks of ice - some the size of a car - threatened to damage or flood homes along the banks of the Kankakee River, but emergency officials say a water siphon system and the recent gradually warmer weather prevented the river from wreaking havoc. Prolonged freezing temperatures with few warm days in January and February turned the Kankakee into sheets of ice as thick as 30 inches in some sections. As temperatures rose, runoff from melting snow broke up the ice into giant chunks...

An ice jam on the Kankakee River caused flooding near the Wilmington area Tuesday, and Will County emergency officials urged residents to be careful as chunks of ice continue to pass through the water. More than two dozen homes were flooded in the Phalen Acres subdivision, said a spokeswoman for the county's emergency management agency. Local officials rescued someone from a vehicle, but the person was not injured, officials said. Meanwhile, Blodgett Road, just west of...

Moderate temperatures will bring some relief this weekend - but they may be a mixed blessing for homeowners and motorists. The extreme swing from subzero temperatures last week can bring its own set of problems, including potholes, leaks and flooding - and the troubles could escalate over the weekend, experts say. High temperatures in the Chicago area are expected to be in the 30s through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service....

A 62-year-old man who went missing while swimming in the Kankakee River with his granddaughter died of drowning and not of a heart problem, according to the Kankakee County coroner's office. The autopsy was completed Saturday, Coroner Bob Gessner said. David Klamecki, of rural Momence, Ill., was found dead Friday evening after he and his granddaughter, Hannah Klamecki, 5, of Villa Park, went boating Wednesday evening, authorities said. Hannah emerged from woods two hours...

Ten days into the new year, temperatures in Chicago are expected to pass the freezing mark for the first time in 2014 today. But there's a new threat: Flooding. Temperatures are forecast to rise into the 30s for the next five days, bringing snow, rain or the dreaded “wintry mix.” As much as an inch of rain, plus melting snow and possible ice jams, could produce minor flooding in flood-prone and low-lying areas, the National Weather Service warned. The rain...

Approximately 100 volunteers and Illinois National Guard soldiers searched along Forked Creek and the Kankakee River on Saturday for a missing 11-year-old Will County boy who had slipped and fallen into the creek two days earlier. "The waters are awfully high, and he got in too deep," said Wilmington Mayor Robert Weidling. "He rolled around a couple of times, then disappeared." The missing boy, identified as Matthew Wren, had been playing along the bank with a friend...

Composer Orbert Davis has drawn inspiration for movements of “The Chicago River,” his new jazz symphony, from particular images in “The Lost Panoramas” by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams. Here is a guide to the five movements of Davis' work, and a key image Davis drew upon for each one, with commentary from Davis, Cahan and Williams. - Howard Reich Movement 5: 'The Seventh Wonder' “This being the seventh engineering wonder of the world, this picture (is) about the...

Gordon Graves, a leading Northern Illinois conservationist who fought for decades to preserve the Kankakee River, died Wednesday in the University of Chicago Hospitals. A resident of Kankakee, he was 80. A retired contractor, Mr. Graves became a self-taught expert on the Kankakee, a river he had loved as a child and wanted to protect for future generations. He formed community activist groups and fought state governments to ensure the river thrived. "Without Gordon, there very likely wouldn't even...

It's not every day scientists see something they haven't before, but that's exactly what happened to some Lake County Forest Preserves employees recently. The forest preserves' natural resource manager, Jim Anderson, and his team discovered during routine sampling of the Des Plaines River a species of shrimp not normally found in northeastern Illinois. This type of shrimp — known as "Palaemonetes kadiakensis," glass shrimp or Mississippi grass shrimp — is normally...

Up to 300 homeowners who live near the banks of the Kankakee River in western Will County are protesting a decision they say will cripple their property values and in some cases make their homes unsalable. The source of the complaints is a new federal flood control map that raises the minimum level for construction by 2 to 8 feet along a three-mile stretch of the Kankakee River just east of the Grundy County line. Residents say the new rules enacted by the Federal Emergency...

At least 12 vehicles, including four semis, were involved in chain-reaction crash this morning on Interstate Highway 55 near Wilmington, a state police dispatcher said. A semitrailer and a pickup truck headed north initially crashed shortly after 7:30 a.m. near Blodgett Road, just north of where the the highway crosses over the Kankakee River, according to a Joliet District dispatcher. Fog on the bridge apparently made visibility poor and at least 10...

Will County officials have identified the body pulled from the Kankakee River as that of a missing Wilmington Township man. An autopsy late Tuesday determined the body was that of Michael Smith, 34, who had been missing since Thanksgiving weekend. Investigators found his body on Monday afternoon. The Will County Sheriff's Department ruled out foul play. The Will County coroner's office could not provide a cause of death, though investigators speculated that...

The Blizzard of 2011 came in with a roar but will go out with a long, slushy whimper. With temperatures likely to nudge into the 40s by Wednesday — and most importantly, no precipitation — the Chicago area will see a gradual, controlled thaw that poses little risk of flooding, experts say. Ice fishermen will need to tread more carefully, but all those mountainous snowdrifts that still line streets and ring parking lots will slowly...

Three people were accused Monday of stealing a $500,000 cigarette boat, leading police on a chase on the Kankakee River and ditching the boat on one island and swimming to another, Will County authorities said. Apprehended were Daniel Nelson, 22, Jeremy Ingram, 22, and Jessica Mattson, 19, all from Farmington, near Peoria, who were charged with felony theft and possession of a stolen motor vehicle, officials said. Authorities received a call at about 8 a.m. Monday...

An explosion at a wastewater treatment plant in Kankakee on Monday morning sent thousands of gallons of sludge and raw sewage into the Kankakee River, prompting a massive cleanup effort to plug the leak and stop the spread downstream. The state Environmental Protection Agency, which dispatched an inspector to the site midday, said the spill appeared to be contained within a half-mile or so of the rupture near 1600 W. Brookmont Blvd., and area drinking water was not affected....

Ed Mullady, of Kankakee, will be inducted into the Illinois Conservation Foundations' Outdoor Hall of Fame. I was with Mullady, 84, last week when he heard that he would be given this prestigious award. It was then when I was able talk to and learn more about the man who is publisher of one of the nation's oldest outdoor publications, The Sportsman's Letter, and is a long-time advocate for the Kankakee River. Q. When did your love for the Kankakee River start? ...